Category: Opus Dei

A wealthy musician lost $20 million over six years to scammers who persuaded him of threats against him coming out of Central America, the conservative Catholic movement Opus Dei and the CIA, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

Vikram Bedi’s co-defendant, Helga Invarsdottir, pleaded guilty last year to grand larceny and is awaiting sentencing.

A noted music composer and oil-family heir was fleeced out of as much as $20 million over a six-year period by a Westchester computer repairman and his girlfriend, authorities said Monday.

The saga began in August 2004 when Roger Davidson, 58 years old, a pianist and jazz composer who once won a Latin Grammy, took his computer to Datalink Computer Services in Mount Kisco, saying the machine had been infested with a virus.

The owners of the company, Vickram Bedi, 36, and his girlfriend, Helga Invarsdottir, 39, became aware of Mr. Davidson’s high profile and allegedly proceeded to convince him that he was the target of an assassination plot ordered by Polish priests affiliated with Opus Dei, a conservative Roman Catholic organization, authorities said.

British film-maker Roland Joffe is to recreate the life and miracles of Jose Maria Escriva de Balaguer, the Spanish priest who founded Opus Dei, one of the most influential and secretive organisations within the Catholic Church.

The film seems set to stir up more controversy, following in the wake of several screen hits tapping into public fascination with tales of Opus-inspired crimes and conspiracies, which have set Vatican chasubles aflap.

The Liberal Democrats have launched a fierce attack on Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly – insisting her personal beliefs were incompatible with defending gay rights. Equality spokeswoman Lorely Burt called on Ms Kelly – a practising member of the Opus Dei branch of the Catholic church – to stand down immediately.

Opus Dei, the conservative Catholic organisation, has paid a rare and fulsome tribute to Gianmario Roveraro, an Italian banker who was found murdered last week, chopped into pieces beneath a motorway bridge. The statement is as close as the group’s secretive policy allows to admitting that the pious financier was a member of the movement. The kidnapping of Roveraro, whose remains were found on Friday after he was cut up with a chainsaw, has intensified the scrutiny of Opus Dei and echoed a scandal over the 1982 murder of Roberto Calvi, “God’s Banker”, who was found dead under Blackfriars Bridge

The badly beaten and mutilated corpse of Gianmario Roveraro, one of Italy’s reputedly most pious financiers, was discovered “cut to pieces” under a motorway overpass near Parma yesterday, some two weeks after he was kidnapped while returning home from a meeting of the conservative Roman Catholic group Opus Dei. Three people were arrested on suspicion of the kidnapping and macabre murder of Mr Roveraro, a banker who had been questioned by investigators in connection with the spectacular €14bn ( £9.5bn) collapse of the Parmalat food empire in 2003. He was a founder of Akros Finanziaria, a financial services group, and